Tuesday 6 September 2016 08.36 EDT
First published on Tuesday 6 September 2016 01.19 EDT

The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has expressed regret for calling Barack Obama a “son of a whore” – a remark that led to the US leader cancelling their meeting during a regional summit in Laos.

In a statement read by his spokesman, Duterte said the remark was not intended as a personal insult. “While the immediate cause was my strong comments to certain press questions that elicited concern and distress, we also regret that it came across as a personal attack on the US president,” Ernesto Abella quoted Duterte as saying.

He added that a meeting with the US had been “mutually agreed upon to be moved to a later date”.

Duterte made his initial remarks following weeks of criticism from the US against extrajudicial killings in the Philippines’ bloody drug war. “Son of a whore, I will curse you in that forum,” Duterte was quoted as saying.

'He's vulgar – but honest': Filipinos on Duterte's first 100 days in office

Read more

Obama said he was trying to schedule “some constructive, productive conversations” with Duterte but a White House spokesman later confirmed the meeting had been cancelled.

As Duterte arrived in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, for the Association of South-East Asian Nations summit on Monday evening, he was already rowing back on the remark, saying he did not want a fight.

“I do not want to quarrel with him. He’s the most powerful president of any country on the planet,” Duterte said. Instead, he said, he was angry at members of the US state department who “keep on mouthing” statements about human rights.

Elected in May on an anti-crime platform, Duterte has lashed out at the US and others for criticising his war on drugs, in which more than 2,400 people have been killed by police and vigilante militia.

Duterte’s personal aides and the Philippine government often try retroactively to soften comments from the man who frequently insults world leaders and promises bloodbaths to achieve his aims. Late on Tuesday, his communications team said Duterte had been addressing a reporter, not Obama.

But even as his team was conducting damage control, the head of state was making more inflammatory remarks as he arrived at the conference, expecting more bloodletting in the Philippines in his war on drugs.

“More people will be killed, plenty will be killed until the last [drug] pusher is out of the streets,” he said in quotes carried by Agence-France Presse.

He also said he would eat members of Abu Sayyaf, a small Islamist militant group in the country’s southern islands, which claimed a bomb that killed 14 people last week in Duterte’s home city Davao.

“They will pay. When the time comes, I will eat you in front of people,” Duterte said. “If you make me mad, in all honesty, I will eat you alive, raw.”

Barack Obama cancels meeting after Philippines president calls him 'son of a whore'

Read more

The Philippines has been a key US ally for years and Washington hopes it will remain one, especially as a partner against China’s military expansion in the South China Sea.

The country, which has overlapping claims with China to islands and atolls in the sea, won an international ruling against Beijing in July. But Duterte has said it is “better to continually engage China in a diplomatic dialogue rather than anger officials there”, starkly at odds with his recent comments about Obama.

Duterte’s spokesman Abella said on Tuesday: “Our primary intention is to chart an independent foreign policy while promoting closer ties with all nations, especially the US, with which we have had a longstanding partnership.”

With domestic popularity ratings in the order of 90%, the Philippine leader has won approval for his foul-mouthed press conferences from a public tired with years of well-spoken politicians from a small Manila-based elite.